Cycle to the Sea

2024

Funded by Creative Ireland with the Department of the Environment,
Climate and Communications |  Creative Climate Action Fund

“Cycle to the Sea” is a unique community engagement project focusing on co-creating a series of sculptural artworks along an existing rural road from the village of Cloyne to the sea in East Cork in order to encourage more cycling and less driving. These sculptures serve as artistic expressions co-designed by the community as well as distance markers and navigational aids. This innovative is a collaboration with local sculpture artist Aoife Banville and aims to transform the way residents of Cloyne in East Cork think about travel, art, and the environment.

We held a series of open-call community workshops to establish the route and co-design the art pieces and road markers. The route chosen goes from the Round Tower in Cloyne to Ballynamona Beach. Unpredictable weather led to a couple of wet workshops, both for the nature walk and first group cycle of the route. Despite the rain, groups of community members still showed up to learn and get involved with Cycle to the Sea.

Once the artwork themes were determined by the community, our team got to work on logistics of placement, materials and scale. The prototyping process for the sculptures then began. It was decided to cut artworks out of metal using a local laser-cutting company called ROS Precision. Once the discs were cut out, they were brought to Cronin Trailers where they were welded onto poles, given brackets for stability, and inserted into old tractor tyres with a sleeve welded inside. This mechanism makes the sculptures portable and easy to install.

9 sculptures were placed alongside the Cycle to the Sea route at three locations, (1) at the junction where Ballyduff and Kilmacahill meet, (2) just after the cross on Ballingarrane, and (3) just before Ballynamona Beach. The three themes used in the sculptures are inspired by nature and the locality were native wildlife (a hedgehog, the hare, and a wren), foliage (blackberries, a plantain grass plant and the common foxglove), and seaweeds (oarweed, sea moss, bladderwrack).